


I'll Be As Honest As You Let Me

by Amberly



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: False Pretenses, Gaslighting, Implied Relationship, M/M, Memory Loss, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 15:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4268775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberly/pseuds/Amberly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You used to be--” </p>
<p>“Smaller,” Steve fills in with a forced laugh and a hand clapped to Bucky’s arm. He ignores the furrow to Bucky’s brow, the purse of his lips. The set to his jaw that tells Steve that Bucky meant something different. Steve swallows. He steps out of Bucky’s space with a porcelain grin, fragile and easily shattered on the clench-unclench of Bucky’s hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be As Honest As You Let Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [techieturnover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/techieturnover/gifts).



> So this is something that started with Milo (im-the-punk-who) and this idea of Steve not being so squeaky clean. There was much conversation centered around Fall Out Boys' "Fourth of July" as it could relate to Stucky and this fic was born--and modified, based on additional conversations. 
> 
> This is a VERY LATE birthday present to Milo I'M SORRY BRAINTWIN I ANGSTED A LOT.

“You used to be--”

“Smaller,” Steve fills in with a forced laugh and a hand clapped to Bucky’s arm. He ignores the furrow to Bucky’s brow, the purse of his lips. The set to his jaw that tells Steve that Bucky meant something different. Steve swallows. He steps out of Bucky’s space with a porcelain grin, fragile and easily shattered on the clench-unclench of Bucky’s hands.

Steve keeps himself just out of reach. Doesn’t look at Bucky when they talk. He remembers tanned skin and broad shoulders, a desperate, devouring mouth. Bucky now is Versaille after a hurricane, the Hall of Mirrors shattered and filled with debris. He is sharp edges and cracked reflections, giving Steve glimpses of a man he knows was drowned in the storm. And even if Steve did mean, had meant, it’s too much. Too many splinters of glass in his hands when they brush against Bucky’s skin. It’s better to lie, to give Bucky the false history of their friendship, of lines never crossed.

But there are hollows in Bucky’s cheeks and bruises under his eyes.

_Mine,_ Bucky never gets to finish. _You used to be mine_. There’s tension. Bucky’s shoulders hunched against the memories he won’t let go of. Steve doesn’t meet his eyes. Steve laughs like crystal, bright and transparent, telling Bucky stories with holes. It leaves him reeling. He clings to them, passing them through his mind at night while he lies away in a too-big bed, trying to reconcile the truth etched into his bones with the words from Steve’s lips.

Steve is his oldest friend. Bucky tells himself this as he slides in to bed, in the morning when he slides out. He wears it wrapped though his fingers, binds it to himself, desperate for the reassurance. Steve his oldest friend and Steve cares about him (cares, not loves). Steve is not Pierce, and Bucky can trust him. Does trust him. He forgets the salt-tang that ghosts over his tongue, the whisper of fingers on his hip. He brings it up, finally, after leaving a Hydra base in a ruin of fire and ash. It’s the flush on Steve’s cheeks that does it, the way his lips part to pant.

“Stevie--” he starts and chokes, because Steve flinches. Catches the jagged edge of his gaze and exhales, then smiles. Steve is always smiling.

“Yeah? You okay?”

Bucky can’t quite bring himself to ask. He stares with shadows on his face, growing in his chest like mold. He rubs his arms, smooths away the ash on his skin, and tries again.

“Did we ever--? Were we--?”

“Where we what?” Steve’s brow furrows, then smooths cellophane clear, and Bucky’s got ash on his tongue now, coating his lungs as Steve’s eyes tighten, just a bit. Just enough to have Bucky backing up. Steve’s laugh is just as engineered as the rest of his body, and Bucky’s hands clench at his sides.

“Wow, Buck,” he grins, lopsided and with a squint to his eyes that he things is supposed to be a crinkle. “That’s some memory you made there. I’m flattered, but--”

“Liar,” it’s not loud. Barely a whisper, hurled out of Bucky’s mouth out of months of doubt and misery, nights spent curled around the brittle shards of his memories. Months of convincing himself that Steve wouldn’t lie to him. His memories must be wrong, must be planted by Hydra to confuse him. Lingering effects from the cryo melding dreams and memories, and Bucky stiffens, realizing that this lie goes back farther, birthed in a quiet alley by knocking teeth and too fierce hands. Steve goes white and red and Bucky closes his eyes. He turns without a word, marching away from the broken wreckage of Steve’s face with ramrod spine and balled fists.

Steve doesn’t follow.

Steve rubs the palm of his hand against his eyes and blinks. Tries to calm the dull roar building in his chest. Bucky is gone. Bucky is gone and the man he’s growing to know has all of his memories and none of his soul. It makes it hurt more. This is an old lie, one Steve never thought he’d have to face, one that died in ruins in the snow. Steve wets his lips and heads home with the crash of fireworks cradles against his chest, the memory of his first time tucked like stolen goods in the back of his mind.

His 16th birthday. Cheap whiskey and Bucky’s hands. Soft, breathy reverence from a boy who had always known who Steve was, known the steel settled in his bones. Bucky’d upped the hollows of his cheeks with calloused hands and prayed against his lips. And if that was all a boy like Steve could get, he was going to take it. And if he was a liar, fine, but Bucky’s love kept his warm through the winter, and Steve kept a smile on his face even through the slick disgust rolling in his chest.

Steve didn’t deserve the trembling fingers on his thighs, the caress of lips on his cheek. Not when he kept Bucky’s heart hoarded in a jar, locked up tight. Steve was too poor, too thin, desperate for the chance to be loved by someone beautiful, until he wasn’t. He wasn't, and Bucky’s eyes burned when he looked at him, the hunger naked and bared for all the world. Steve remembers the bar. the way Bucky had watched him, still, like he was precious. The slow crumble of his face Steve’s hand didn’t tighten on his own.

The door is shut. Steve leans his forehead against it, forehead resting on the handle. He squares his shoulders and opens it. Bucky’s on the couch, looking at him with sparks in his eyes. Steve leans the door shut, hands pressed against the wood. His knees tremble. Between them lies a misunderstanding more vast than their 70 years apart. Steve told half-truths to save them, and his timing wrong, bad explosions tearing Bucky’s trust away in the blast.

“Buck--”

“Shut up,” he hisses, eyes flat, the metal of his arm flinty. “You lied to me.” Bucky stands. “You let me think--”

Steve flinches and hangs his head like the scolded child he is. Because out of all his flashy sins, this is the worst: What he’s let Bucky believe. It’s the cringing crack in their foundation: Steve let Bucky believe he loved him when he’d just wanted to be loved. He is mute, watching Bucky with mounting fear. Bucky is jerky as he walks towards him, his breathing harsh, and he looks in to Steve’s face with a flicker of helplessness, eyes wide and catching the evening sun like a painting.

“Did you mean any of it?”

Steve should think. Needs to think. But he can’t lie. He owes Bucky some kind of truth after months of lies, months of letting Bucky doubt what memories he could still cling to. It still sticks in his throat. Still clings to his tongue as he wets his lips. Bucky was his friend. Bucky is his friend. And he deserves better than a man who doesn’t love him. Steve turns his head, closing his eyes.

“No.”

He leaves silently, shutting the door against the bright white heat of Bucky’s fury. Steve walks to his room with slumped shoulders and tucks himself in to bed without showering. There’s an ache in his chest and a fire behind his eyes. He turns over. Presses his face into his pillow and tries to ignore the sound of glass breaking, of Bucky raging in the living room. Steve falls asleep with itching finger and a ghost at his back, the memory of love like silt on his tongue.

 

 


End file.
